


Us and Them

by asuralucier



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Age Gap Exchange 2019, Amicable Divorce, Banter, Deconstructing First Impressions, Emotional Intimacy, Family Dynamic, M/M, Oliver-Wife POV, gratuitous references to literature, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-12-26 05:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18276716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: It was only later, that Kit would attribute to the growing malaise in her marriage to Elio Perlman. Later, she thought about hers and Oliver’s marriage as something that was never quite healthy, but it gladly popped Nyquil every four to six hours (months) and then kept on trucking.Ten years after her divorce, Oliver's ex-wife meets Elio Perlman.





	Us and Them

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoenixflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/gifts).



> Hi @phoenixflight! Outsider POV is one of my faves but as the CMBYN fandom is tiny and I couldn’t get my Marzia voice to work for a during-that-summer piece, I hope you don’t mind the POV of an Oliver-wife...
> 
> Thanks go to Karios for the beta.

“Hello, Sonny,” said Oliver in his rich baritone, almost as if no time at all had passed. Kit’s middle name was Sonja, and she was sometimes published under Katherine S. Marlowe but only one person called her ‘Sonny.’ “I’m Stateside and practically on your block. I don’t suppose you’d like to have dinner with me?” 

It was good to hear his voice. Kit thought that, and then promptly remembered that there were other things about her ex-husband that she didn’t miss -- such as the fact that he still had terrible timing. It was mid-October, which meant that it was the start of a new academic year, when nearly all the seniors in her capstone seminar were angling for a reference for this and that graduate program, when the departmental politics were at an all-time high because the faculty had yet to settle into a natural pecking order and other odds and ends. 

Usually, Kit made a point not to participate in any of the nonsense, but this year she was in the thick of it, and would remain so for the foreseeable future. The position of Department Chair of English at Newnham College was unpopular enough that a Jacksonesque lottery system was erected to ensure that everyone took a turn just before the beginning of summer holidays every three years. The timing was to ensure that whoever had landed the unlucky draw could have two months of _sans_ -student peace and quiet to get over the trauma before things took off again. 

Kit didn’t think she was over the trauma. But the hot desks weren’t going to allocate themselves and if she got CC’d into another passive aggressive e-mail querying the state of hot desks she was going to hurt someone. 

“I’m drowning in passive-aggressive hot desk e-mails,” Kit deadpanned. “I don’t know if I can get away.” 

“If hot desks are all you’re worried about, then you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Oliver said. 

“There’s a reason I work at a women’s college,” Kit reminded him. “Well, several reasons.” 

“Yes,” Oliver said, “I bet all that catfighting about hot desks really keeps you going.” 

“I,” she said. Something told Kit she shouldn’t, but before she could articulate precisely why, Oliver beat her to it.

“...Elio would like to meet you. If that’s all right.” 

It was only later, that Kit would attribute to the growing malaise in her marriage to Elio Perlman. Later, she thought about hers and Oliver’s marriage as something that was never quite healthy, but it gladly popped Nyquil every four to six hours (months) and kept on trucking. 

Before she really knew of his existence, the sickness in her marriage to Oliver had taken on more or less knowable dimensions. She knew she’d married him when she’d been a certain sort of young woman that he’d been a certain sort of man. That is, the sort that literature loved to waffle on about but real life had little patience for. It used to be one of her favorite things about Oliver, that he’d seem so far away, only to arrive at home sometimes and she would be there, waiting, not wanting to waste a single moment of his being present. 

That narrative too, eventually wore out its welcome and its uxorial shine. Kit was alone now, but this loneliness was something that she had chosen for herself. So it wasn’t loneliness so much as a strategic retreat. A well-deserved rest. 

“...And how is Gaveston?” 

Kit could even hear Oliver wincing over the phone, “You do realize that this allegory makes you the She-Wolf of France?” 

“I’m more interested in what this allegory makes you,” Kit said dryly. “And you know I’m only joking.” 

Oliver said faintly, “ _Do_ I know that?” 

“We were married ten years, Oliver. I don’t know you’ll ever not know me. Even if you tried,” Kit said. “When do you want to meet for dinner, then?” 

 

“Dad’s asked me if I want to meet up for coffee; he is _on my block_ ,” said Julian, who had come home for the weekend. He had just started his first year at Amherst with an eye towards American History because from what he could tell, literature made his mother lonely and philosophy made his father flee the country. History was “nice and safe.” Julian had inherited his father’s fair hair and sharp blue eyes but none of Oliver’s affability. 

“I think you should go,” Kit said. “You hardly see your father.” 

“He’s probably going to want to bring _Gaveston_ ,” Julian swung the fridge shut with an unexpected violence. “...Sebastian won’t shut up about him.” 

“About Oliver?” 

“About _him_.” 

Kit was suddenly reminded of how an innocuous piece of cultural osmosis might turn cruel in one instance and told herself to be more careful in the future. 

Sebastian was studying piano performance at a conservatory in Rome. Kit might have worried about him more, but Oliver lived in Milan and that made her feel better. She tried her best to keep up with Sebastian, but her older son took after Oliver and was hard to get ahold of during the best of times. 

“His name is Elio,” Kit said. “And you don’t have to take my side or anyone’s about this anymore, Julian. There are no sides, and it was a long time ago. I’m meeting them for dinner.” 

Julian stared at her. There was the little niggle of Julian’s being newly eighteen: discovering new opinions, applying them to old wounds. Wanting to grow up but then being scarred by everyone who could pass as an adult in his life. Even Kit, who didn’t really have the time but she tried her best. She chose to believe that Oliver did, too. 

“...Are you serious?” 

“I’ve said to Oliver that he’s got to pick up the check. Treat a lady right.” Another joke, but not really. Kit never did cotton onto a sense of workable humor. That was something else she left to Oliver. 

“I still can’t believe you’re going,” said Julian. “I’m going to my room.” 

 

Oliver ended up choosing an upscale steakhouse on Boyston Street that was a bit too expensive for students to afford, possibly, to save Kit some embarrassment. Oliver had bad timing, but he was good -- more than good, nearly obsessive-compulsive -- about keeping up with meticulous details otherwise lost on other people. It was what made him both a good and a bad academic. When Kit arrived, she spotted a youngish man outside, with windswept curls wearing a dark peacoat. His posture was slightly bent and lackadaisical. Although Kit had never set eyes on Elio Perlman before, she knew it was him somehow. She thought she even knew what was arresting about him, although she couldn’t put why into words. 

(There was a part of Kit too, as she had agonized over what to wear that wondered what he would have made of her. Her profession meant that she was left with few sartorial choices that would have made sense for this dinner. She’d settled on a light plain blouse and dark blue slacks and a pair of shoes that couldn’t be mistaken for teaching shoes.) 

Elio Perlman was puffing on a cigarette but he dropped it and stubbed it out with the toe of his shoe the moment he saw her coming. His grin was a little jagged and sheepish. 

Kit said, “You didn’t have to do that.” 

Elio shrugged, “Oliver said you disliked it. Made him quit.” 

“Oh,” Kit had to put that statement up for review, conclude it was true, and then realized it was embarrassing to think about, “That was different.” Different because she was -- had been -- his wife and Elio was Oliver’s -- most definitely something else. “I reserve the right to frown at him tonight, if I catch him with one.” 

“I can live with that,” Elio said. “Sorry. Um. If you haven’t guessed…” 

“You’re Elio Perlman.” Saying it out loud gave the thing a way out of just being in her imagination. The moment she affixed Elio’s name to his person, Kit didn’t know if it made things better or worse. “...And Oliver’s late.” 

Elio had the sense to look a bit sheepish, “He said he was picking something up. I did tell him we’d be late.” 

“ -- I can hear the two of you gossiping about me from a mile away,” Oliver’s voice sounded behind them. He looked winsome and well and was holding a bunch of carnations. He dropped a light kiss near Elio’s temple, as if it was just a natural thing. After that, he held out the flowers towards Kit, “Anyway, these are for you.” 

Kit took them, and let herself be loped into a one-armed embrace that she was only half expecting. Oliver was wearing cologne; something that he’d always hated doing because he thought that his wearing fragrance meant that he was conceding the possibility of body odor. She had to admit he looked good, a bit more salt-white in his hair than the last time she’d seen him, and a receding hairline gave him a forehead that looked...she was going to go with _distinguished_ , even in the privacy of her own head. 

“I don’t know about gossip,” Elio’s lips twisted as if inviting Kit into a secret; despite herself, she lingered, somewhere between tentatively and already charmed. “We don’t know each other well enough yet. You should at least give us until dessert.” 

 

Oliver must have gone out of the way to ask for a nice table, because their table for three was tucked away, cozy and private, and yet still in possession of a view. There was a park across the way, its grass kept razor-neat and its benches and fences shined. They order wine, and Elio takes the lead on this, full of questions about the vineyard from which the Sangiovese grapes for their Chianti was picked. The waitress wibbled and looked around desperately for some sort of escape. 

“And that’s you done,” Oliver said, placing the lightest touch on Elio’s wrist. “Besides, Sonny doesn’t like showoffs. -- Listen. We’ll just have the Chianti. Never mind about the grapes. It’s fine if you don’t know.” 

“Chianti coming right up,” said the waitress and for all intents and purposes, ran away. 

“I don’t like what, now?” Kit said. In return, Oliver just gave her a look.

Elio said, sliding his own gaze under Oliver’s skin, as if he was sure that Kit wasn’t going to notice, even though she did, “...I’m determined to sound as charming as my father, one day. It’s how he always chatted people up. It’s how he wooed my mother. She was an amateur sommelier.” 

“Wooed,” Kit said. “Didn’t know anyone still used that word.” Although she could have just as easily said the same about the words “amateur sommelier,” that it was a thing. “Wooed” was the sort of word that Oliver would have said to her twenty years ago, to make her laugh. She now wondered if it was Elio who had first given Oliver the word, only for Oliver to forget and give it away. That was something else he did often, as her husband. He forgot things.

Oliver fixed Elio with a look, “I don’t think you’re ever going to be as charming as Pro. Your mother liked those questions, presumably, I mean. The waitress -- doesn’t. Back me up, Sonny.” 

Kit shrugged. “Some people are charming because they need to be? They’d die without it.” Pointedly, Oliver looked away from her. 

Elio’s mouth twitched, “Not my father. Dad was charming to the very end. He’s dead.” 

“I’m,” she caught herself. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” Elio said. “It’s so much more freeing now, knowing that I don’t have to be charming.” 

“Just so you know,” said Oliver. “I’d never minded.” 

 

Halfway through their steaks, Oliver called for another bottle of Chianti and zipped off to the men’s before the waitress could even get a word in. Elio filled Kit’s glass before he topped up his own. “...Is he always like this?” 

Kit took a sip of her Chianti and laughed. She hadn’t meant to, the sound was unkind, at least a little, and she regretted it right away, “So I rarely get to say this at work. But I get to say it to you now. I’m going to relish it.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Not my department,” Kit said. 

Elio’s expression hung in the balance for a few seconds and then he made to wash away the uncertainty with a gulp of wine, “...That’s pretty funny.” He said those words, but he didn’t laugh. 

“Is it? I’m not particularly funny,” it felt odd to admit this. But in Oliver’s sterling, effortless, always _epherimal_ company, and in Elio’s cutting-not-charming _something_ , Kit had no doubt it was true. “No. Here’s something funny, in my head, you’re still sixteen.”

“Seventeen,” Elio reminded her. “I was seventeen that summer.” 

“Is there much of a difference?” Kit couldn’t help but think of Julian, sullen, morose, wearing his juvenilia like a suit of protective armor. With some effort, she could see Elio in a small closet of a room, fuming along with the languid days of a humid Italian summer day. 

“To tell you the truth, there isn’t really,” Elio said. “My heart was always too big for my head and my chest. I’m only now growing into it.” 

“...Is speaking to you always like this?” 

He blinked, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I don’t know. Dipping a toe in the water, perhaps, and then realizing that the puddle you’re stepping into is actually two thousand leagues deep.” 

Elio opened his mouth as if to answer, but then Oliver slid back into his chair and looked between them. 

“Now what are we talking about?” 

“...Now we’re gossiping,” Kit said and was drawn in by Elio’s secret smile, “It’s nearly dessert.” 

 

Despite herself, Kit agreed to join them for one round of cocktails at a nearby bar after dinner. The easy way Elio and Oliver had with each other fascinated her, and in spite of herself, she’d never wished Oliver any unhappiness and it lifted her heart to see him happy again. He cajoled her into getting a large glass of Chardonnay rather than just a medium like a sensible person on a Saturday evening. 

“Who are you again?” Kit squinted ironically in Oliver’s direction. “Academics don’t _have_ weekends.” 

“I’ve started having weekends,” Oliver said. “And _reposos_.” 

Elio leaned in conspiratorially in Kit’s direction. His elbow brushed by Oliver’s arm, but it was by Oliver’s not having noticed that Kit derived true comfort. Perhaps that was why Elio was so keen to have a secret with her. He and Oliver had run out. “What he’s _not_ telling you, is that he only started taking _reposos_ because they want him to retire as a Professor Emeritus. Not because he is cool. Or anything.”

“That sounds amazing for someone still doing time,” Kit intoned, only a bit ironically. 

“You’ve not done time properly, Sonny until someone storms into your office with a copy of Sappho --” 

Elio groaned, miming tragedy by burying his face his hands, “ _Not_ again.” 

“Right?” Kit said. “I don’t think he was this happy when he handed in his thesis.” 

Oliver, not unlike a world-weary soldier with exactly one wound, pushed on, “I’m serious. You’re eighteen. You might be young and impressionable, but you saw nothing wrong with a gnarled professor who invites you for port tasting and poetry. Not even any of the good stuff but _Sappho_ \-- no alarm bells, no nothing?” 

Oliver’s history as the chair of Classics was notably more storied than Kit’s own. Three years after he’d procured tenure, he was launched without preparation or even his initial knowledge to head of department. Famously, there was a Professor Emeritus who hid away in the department basement in a space that used to be a custodian’s closet as an act of rebellion against his retirement. Said professor invited freshmen girls of a type (blond, bosomy, even brainy after a fashion) into his office for private port and poetry sessions. The whole thing had nearly caused a scandal that had cost Oliver his grant because he hadn’t been paying attention, but in the end he’d asked the Professor Emeritus to retire without further fuss. 

“I’m just happy that it wasn’t Catullus,” said Kit. “There, I stole your punchline.” 

“That’s hardly fair,” said Oliver. 

“Don’t worry,” Elio said. “I’d still follow you into the basement. But I wouldn’t drink your wine. I bet your taste is awful.” 

Kit was nearing the bottom of her glass, “I ought to be going,” she said. “But it was nice to meet you, Elio.” And she found that she meant it. 

She remembered the carnations that Oliver had bought her still left next to her seat. Kit picked them up and walked out of the bar. She walked quickly, not wanting to give them a chance to convince her to stay for another. Kit could see that it was the polite thing to do. She’d left their world, but perhaps they would not even notice. 

**Author's Note:**

> "Gaveston" is the male lover of Edward II who was married to Isabella, sometimes called the "She-Wolf of France." Christopher Marlowe wrote a play based on the events of the life of Edward II, which ended with Edward being killed by a foreign object (a red-hot poker) introduced to a certain part of his person....just in case you wondered why Oliver was wincing at the analogy.
> 
> Newnham College is an all-female college in Cambridge, UK, but I really liked the name so I borrowed it. A lot of Virginia Woolf's _A Room of One's Own_ was written both at Newnham and about Newnham. 
> 
> Hot desking is a thing. It is awful.


End file.
